"Ooh, right, it was just that people could summon magical creatures like you to help them with things?" Lissa frowns. "Does your kind of magical creature have healing power or is that something else? I feel like I missed some explanations." 

"I have medical training but mostly people get angels to do that for things other than limb replacements or organ transplants."

Vanyel twists around. "You can replace limbs? Um, I mean, not you, but 'angels' – is that what you were calling 'changers' before? That's amazing." 

"Limbs are easier for us than for angels - those are the changers, yeah, sorry. They're better at, like, infections, sealing up incisions, knitting broken bones - I can apply antibiotics for the infections and I have cheats for incisions and bones but they're better at it assuming equivalent training."

"...I have a friend who would really like to talk to you about healing," Vanyel says. "Though it'd be impractical because she's all the way in our capital. Er, did you want to play us another song or should I do one? I don't care what it's about or anything, music from other worlds is just neat. Oh, and..." he hesitates, "...I'd really enjoy trying the violin at some point. If that's all right with you. It sounds beautiful and it's so different." A brief, tight smile. "I also know someone – a couple of someone's – who'd be delighted with all your music, but unfortunately they're in Haven too." 

Cam offers him the violin.

Vanyel takes it. He’s been carefully observing how Cam holds the instrument and the bow as well as his fingerings, almost without realizing it, and he gets it settled under his chin and tries to play a note.

The first one comes out as a screech and he grimaces, but the second is clearer. “Um, any pointers?”

Sure, Cam can give him a violin lesson.

Vanyel is delighted to have a violin lesson! He’s pretty quick at picking up new instruments - it has strings, it’s not that different from what he’s used to.

Then soon the violin will not sound like a dying cat.

"Are you having fun yet?" Lissa says brightly, when Vanyel is busy playing some unknown Valdemaran song and managing to mostly not sound like a dying cat. 

"...I guess? Sure. Music doesn't actually usually cure depression but it's still fun."

Lissa gives the shrug of someone who has no idea what to say in response, and goes off to get herself another drink. 

Vanyel finishes the song and offers the violin back. "Thank you, this is a lovely instrument and I might want to try her again later. I think right now I want to get more coffee and then find reading material, though." 

"Anytime," says Cam. "Take one home with you after we're done here if you like, I'm not short on them." But he accepts it back.

Vanyel starts to walk away, and then stops. He turns around slowly, staring at a point above Cam's left shoulder. 

"...I used human sacrifice magic," he blurts out suddenly. "During the war. It was in an emergency and it's complicated and a long story, but – I kept meaning to tell you and didn't, and I feel like it's something you deserve to know about me. Um. So now you do." 

He turns again, stiffly, and marches in Bar's direction. 

Lissa, frozen for a moment with drink in hand, starts walking again, coming close enough to lower her voice.

"He killed six enemy soldiers who'd ambushed him and our aunt, who was unconscious with backlash and totally helpless because she held a three-hundred-mile Gate for half a candlemark. He would've had to fight them off anyway, he was just too exhausted because he'd been acting as half our firepower all damned day, and I was an idiot and didn't think to give him a guard. He made a lot of mistakes – main mistake was not telling anyone but Savil – but it just went public and he went under trial with the Heralds' Court and they exonerated him. He and Savil would've died otherwise and we would've lost Sunhame and the war would probably still be happening now. It's not – I can't say it wasn't wrong, it was, and he made mistakes to end up in that position at all, but...so did I, and everyone else involved, and gods, I can't... Just, circumstances, right?" 

She takes her drink to a nearby booth and sits down and props her chin in her hands, staring vaguely at the explosions outside. 

"Thank you for telling me."

Neither of them answers him.

Cam works on his letter.

Vanyel asks Bar for reading recommendations to learn more about computers, and if there are any beverages with caffeine in them that don't taste like dessert. 

Unsweetened tea? And a book called Babbage Onward.

The tea will do just fine. Vanyel sits down, a good distance from both Cam and Lissa, and rubs his forehead for a while before trying to focus on the book. (He's an irritating combination of very tired and not at all sleepy.) 

Eventually Cam is done with his letter, and asks quietly if one of them would rewrite it in the local language and then hold the door so he can send a drone with it to the place Leareth will be looking.

Vanyel doesn't seem to be listening, but Lissa hops up. "Of course!"